That was the situation.

Germany is now fighting for her very existence, and I, who am not without knowledge of German conditions, am convinced that never has there been a war more wholly that of a whole people than is this present conflict, as far as Germany is concerned.

Any one who has been in even superficial touch with German public opinion and individual feeling in any part of the empire, since the war began, must know that there is hardly a man, woman, or child throughout the empire who would hesitate if called upon to sacrifice possessions or life in order to insure victory to the Fatherland.  Seventy million people who are animated by unanimous sentiment of this sort cannot be crushed, probably not subdued.

And England is confronted by the certainty that her world leadership is the stake for which she is fighting; that her defeat would mean the end of the vast dominance which she has exercised throughout the world, since the time of the Armada, through the power of her great navy.

Is it not apparent, therefore, that these nations, if left to themselves, inevitably must continue the war until one side or the other, or both, shall become exhausted—­an eventuation which may be postponed not for mere months but for years?

In our own civil war Grant for almost two years stood within a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles of Richmond, the heart of the Confederacy, and was not able to sufficiently subdue Lee’s forces to enable him to get possession of the city until the complete exhaustion of the Confederacy’s resources in men and money had been accomplished.

[Illustration:  VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE

(Photo from George G. Bain.)

See Page 477]

[Illustration:  DR. BERNHARD DERNBURG

(Photo by Campbell Studios.)

See Page 487]

[Illustration:  DAVID STARR JORDAN

See Page 502]

[Illustration:  JOHN GRIER HIBBEN

(Photo by McManus.)

See Page 503]

While that situation may not offer a true parallel in all respects to that in which we find the belligerent forces in the present European war, it nevertheless may be taken as a precedent proving that frontal encounters of powerful opponents generally do not yield final results until actual exhaustion compels one side or the other to abandon hope.

Such an exhaustion hardly can be expected within measurable time on the part of either one or the other of the combatants in the existing European conflict, and this means the probable continuation for a long period of the merciless slaughter which has marked the last few months.  We hold up our hands in horror at the stories of human sacrifices in the early ages when, after all, these were, perhaps, less brutal and less appalling than the wholesale slaughter of the flower of these warring peoples of which we now read almost daily.